A Beast of Burden
by Tozette
Summary: There was commotion in the stables, for the word had passed around: the Suugu of the King had got the flu... Shounen ai.


This is still total character butchery, but now I've changed the spelling errors.

On with the... _story._

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"Influenza?" Shouryuu repeated quizzically.

The frantically kowtowing stable-hand nodded feverishly. He couldn't have been more than thirteen. "Yes, En-ou," he said.

"All of them?"

The boy cringed. "Yes, En-ou,"

It was intriguing more than irritating, really, even if he was going to be late. There wasn't much that was faster than a suugu in the air. "How?"

"There was a cub that got it first – the runt of the litter, we should probably have killed it off," beside his king, Rokuta shifted uncomfortably, "but we didn't because that can distress the mother, so the mother got it, and, before we realised it –"

"It spread through the whole stable," Shouryuu nodded thoughtfully, cutting off the rambling. "So we have no suugu at the moment."

The stable-hand nodded, then swallowed. "Actually, En-ou, we have no form of personal transportation,"

That was a little more inconveniencing. "And... how did this happen?"

The boy swallowed. "At first we stabled the infected ones in with the other flying beasts, because we didn't think the flu would mutate fast enough to infect them all... but, well... it did," he hung his head further, looking a little like a sulking puppy from Shouryuu's point of view, which was admittedly not the best. "We are very sorry for our mistakes, En-ou,"

"Uh-huh," the emperor muttered. Rokuta looked a little worried. Probably about the animals. It wasn't likely that the little brat was thinking about how the Hell they were going to get to Kei.

He thanked the stable-boy, which made the kid face-fault – or, at least, it looked like a face-fault. Maybe he was just bowing – and began walking back to the palace.

"So how are you going to get to your meeting with Youko?"

Shouryuu made a non-committal noise which the Kirin of En interpreted as, _I have no idea_. "By ship?" he replied jokingly.

At least, the ministers trotting behind him thought it was a joke. Rokuta knew him too well.

"Well, she probably won't mind if we postpone it," he pointed out softly. The king cuffed him lightly on the head, to which the ministers and various toadies following them murmured in shock. They still got all offended when things didn't go exactly formal around the palace. He snorted softly.

"Do you want to tell her that we can't go anywhere because our stables are just that poorly organized? Hmm... Ne, Junko-san, do you think you could see about getting some more isolation stalls? And why weren't the ones we already had not put into use correctly?" he called out amiably over his shoulder. A tall woman with pale pink hair and slightly less frilly clothing than the rest of them bowed deeply and peeled off to one of the side-corridors.

"Should you really have to be supervising the running of the stables?"

Shouryuu shrugged. "I won't have to now. She's reliable. I may have her made a san-nin."

Rokuta gave him a flat look that said, clear as day, _you found her at a whorehouse somewhere, didn't you?_ Sometimes it was easy to forget that the kid was almost six-hundred. Then he'd give him a look like that.

Shouryuu shrugged uneasily. En hadn't been in trouble for a good half a millennium. So what if his hobbies weren't exactly the same as his predecessors'?

"We will need to find some way to get there," he sighed. "Perhaps we should see if we can find a reliable ride in the city?"

"You're still overdrawn on your allowance from last time, your majesty," one of the ministers behind them piped up. It was obvious that _last time_ was really, _Last Time,_ and that a repeat of it would cause much trouble for the king.

"Allowance," Shouryuu scoffed in disbelief. "Well, what about your youma?"

"I asked them to help rebuild the town that the Shoku destroyed," Rokuta answered. Regardless of who was on the throne, Shoku were Shoku; a law unto themselves.

Shouryuu gave him a surprised glance. "Even your nyokai?"

Rokuta shrugged uncomfortably. "The people will freeze if things aren't rebuilt before winter. You know how abruptly the weather changes between seasons."

Shouryuu nodded. En wasn't nearly as bad as, say, Tai, but the weather wasn't nearly as forgiving as that of Kei or Kou, either. Famine was hardly a problem in a well-established nation like En; now that the refugees from Kei had gone home there was always plenty of food to be sent to places where there was little, but rebuilding took the same amount of time no matter where you were.

"Would you like me to send a letter to Kei-ou?" one of the ministers cooed. She was tanned, large-breasted and rather more forward than she should have been.

Shouryuu spent most of his time trying to ignore her. Truthfully, she made him uneasy. Right now, she was offering a generous view of her cleavage, if he wanted it. He declined her offer as politely as he could. Both of them.

"I wonder how Keiki would take that," he suggested to Rokuta quietly.

The small blond made an inelegant noise. Then he seemed to think about it for a moment before raising one hand out flat and parallel to the floor, twisting it back and forth at the wrist in an uncertain gesture.

"Actually, she seems to have him pretty whipped," he commented. Shouryuu raised an eyebrow at his turn of phrase, but made a curious, encouraging noise. "I mean, he's been letting her ride him, which is..."

Shouryuu coughed suddenly and Rokuta gave him a dirty look. "That's _not_ what I meant, you filthy old lech."

"Didn't he let Taiki ride him when he was younger?"

Rokuta shrugged. "...Taiki cried at him," he pointed out as though that explained everything and, Shouryuu supposed, when you were a creature whose entire being was based on empathy and compassion and you were particularly inexpressive, it probably did.

Rokuta was silent a moment more. "Actually, now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure that Taiki let Gyousou-san ride him, as well," he said slowly.

Shouryuu eyed him for a moment, considering the implications of that sentence, before something much more important hit him between the eyes. He turned to face the smaller blond, bending down to be at his eye level.

"Hey... Enki," he purred ingratiatingly.

"What?" the Kirin of En stuck his chin out defiantly. His tone was incredibly suspicious. The ministers behind them were in the process of either making themselves scarce – that was the portion whose sensibilities were too delicate to watch another fight between King and Kirin – or placing bets.

Shouryuu leaned in until his lips were next to the boy's right ear. It must have looked very interesting from the point of view of the people around them. The blue silk of his semi-formal, worn-under-protest robes brushed Rokuta's chin.

He stood firm, glaring, stubborn, and_ absolutely not blushing_ as the King's lips whispered over the shell of his ear.

This was a new argumentative tactic.

His voice was low, rough, and did irritating things to his heartbeat. It took him about five seconds before he actually realised that what had sounded awfully like a proposition was actually a jumped-up rendition of, _you can **fly**, Enki._

What flew through his head was: _No. Way. In. Hell._ There. That was firm. He was sure of himself. This might have been a new tactic, but he was _not_ a slave to his libido. He wasn't even a slave to the _King's_ libido... well, not unless he was _ordered_ to be, which might actually be quite interesting but that _was not the point_. The point was that he would _not_ be reduced to a _beast of burden_.

No way, no how. Never. He glared at the soft-looking skin of Shouryuu's neck. It was a good glare, a strong glare.

Shouryuu bit his earlobe and he shivered.

"Okay,"

Damnit. That was some new argumentative tactic.

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This was so stupid. But I was thinking about Keiki letting Youko ride him and I was thinking, "Man, Enki would never do that..."


End file.
